with 390 “workflows” on my 1 page app i can no longer ctrl F for anything… like i am screwed.
Looks like ill spend another 5 years updating all my workflows along side of still trying to figure out my “workload units”…
my question for the bubble team is:
With a $100M funding round, you couldnt spend a little extra time creating the new interface while ALSO keeping the old interface available for those who want it?
John, please don’t take this as criticism, but if you have 390 workflows on a single page, it might be a good time to start making more use of reusable elements and custom events in your project.
By creating a reusable element, not only can you reuse the visual component itself, but all the workflows associated with it are contained within it. This greatly improves the organization and maintainability of your app.
Another best practice is to organize your workflows into folders within the editor. This will definitely make navigation much easier. You can also rename your workflows to make them more readable and easier to find.
These are just a few good practices that will help, regardless of your editor’s layout.
But “Backend workflows” is jus backend workflows and reusables don’t help there.
Sure, you can have folders, but folders are not ideal way of organising. We need labels. Not everything falls under one specific folder. I may have a workflow that falls under folder “Payments” as well as “periodic workflows” as well as “Communication”. Now when I have to look for a workflow, I keep searching in all these folders?
They must have given labels as the way of organising instead of rigid folder structure. Labels are not new for organising. Gmail had it two decades ago.
And reusables must be used, yes. But reusables have a very difficult architecture when it comes to communicating with parent or peer elements on the page. So, many times it is easier to have things on one page than in reusables.
And all these are the ways we have worked under the constraints that Bubble has created. We have learned and managed to work with these constraints and even though these are painful, we have stayed with them as unfortunately, Bubble doesn’t have better ways to handle those.
However here, Bubble is basically saying (and it has said so many times in past changes) that
We won’t fix the issues that we have, but we would change other things and break more things. You are on your own to figure out more workarounds, change your mental models, spend time fixing your apps, spend time learning and unlearning things. And we won’t listen to your feedback either, even on UX as we know better on what you need.
All 3 of the recommendation are bad
Reusables are disconnected from outside still, need to be able to set dynamic custom states + ability to display data on other reusables properties other than the main property
Folders, waste of time
Rename waste of time
There are several ways to pass data between reusable elements and the page where they’re used. You can use the main property when adding additional properties to the reusable, custom states, URL parameters, and even trigger custom events from the page into the reusable. In more advanced cases, it’s also possible to send data from inside the reusable back to the main page using basic JavaScript with the Toolbox plugin.
If you’re planning to build larger, scalable, and maintainable applications, learning how to properly use reusable elements is absolutely essential. I highly recommend reading this article:
As for the opinion that organizing workflows into folders or renaming them is a waste of time — that’s your choice, but please don’t say it’s pointless, because it definitely isn’t.
Absolutely… this is the consequence of your own actions @anon6558619
You can search using the search bar at the top. Additionally, I recommend clicking the settings icon and enabling ‘Show conditions’ so that it shows any conditions instead of the useless number of actions.
Use folders, clean your room. Not so bad, is it?
i do have reusable element in there bud. You have no idea what my application is or what it does so bold of you too assume.
appreciate you input though “bubble certified developer”
Be respectful. Everybody try to help you. You can disagree but however, @georgecollier tell you exactly what you need to search and find your workflow without using ctrl-f. And yes, having so many workflow on your page can raise questions about performance and optimization. No we don’t know your app, but we seen a lot of apps in the past in same case that your and there’s, most of the time, a lot of way to optimize them. Just from your screenshot… a disabled workflow, 0 action…
This article was written in 2019 it says a lot about how skeptical you are now that you are referring it. I know every way of passing data and use reusables heavily don’t be condescending. If you like renaming folders be my guest, I have seen people renaming their folders with icons, you can try that too
In fact, the article being from 2019 only reinforces that best practices are timeless. The author, by the way, was hired by Bubble itself to rewrite the platform’s official manual and is also responsible for some of the best books on Bubble performance and security.
In any programming best practices guide or manual, you’ll find principles like “Don’t Repeat Yourself” and the recommendation to break down complex problems into smaller steps whenever possible — and reusable elements serve exactly these two purposes. This doesn’t mean they should be used in every situation, but on pages with many elements and workflows, using reusable elements is definitely a best practice to keep the project more organized, easier to maintain, and with better performance.
Anyone who has worked on larger projects knows how much of a difference this makes as the app grows. I’ve personally had the misfortune of working on large applications where developers barely used reusable elements or custom events — and maintaining or developing new features in those projects was simply a nightmare.
Contradicts
My new plugin Data Jedi makes this simple.
This is possible with Data Jedi
Anybody interested in understanding how to create a single reusable element as a data center that can communicate globally throughout the entire app, check out Data Jedi. It doesn’t just save unfathomable amounts of WUs, it also extends Bubble capabilities, brings otherwise difficult tasks for non-technicals into simplistic terms and actions, and enable functions that are currently just not available in plain vanilla bubble.
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